“This is the latest style of headgear for gentlemen,” Frank laughed back. “It is a dog-gone good thing.”
“Oh, what a horrid pun!” exclaimed the strange girl. “If you make puns, I shall be sorry you jumped over to help me.”
“But if I do not make puns—what then? Will you know me after the boat is reached?”
“I trust, sir, you do not think me utterly devoid of any sense of gratitude? It was so good of you, an entire stranger, to do such a thing.”
“Oh, it was nothing. You are beginning to find it difficult to keep up. Your wet clothing is dragging on you now.”
“I can keep up till they reach us. They have stopped the boat—they are turning.”
But Frank could see that her desperate exertion to reach the dog had exhausted her more than she thought at first, and her wet skirts were winding about her ankles and hampering the movements of her lower limbs, making it very difficult for her to swim.
Now that Frank was so close to her and she had been deprived of her hat, which might have added to her attractiveness, he could see that she was fully as handsome as he had thought her at first glance, for not even the plunge into the water had made her seem otherwise. She had such dark eyes, and they expressed so much! Of course, the water had taken the curl out of her hair, and that, with the loss of her stylish hat, was the test that proved her beauty, for she had lost not a bit of her attractiveness.
Her face was oval and finely molded, having just the needed roundness and fullness to relieve it of delicacy, and not enough to make it seem at all coarse. Her lips were still red, despite her plunge into the lake. Her teeth were milky white and regular, and she showed them to advantage when she laughed, without making too much of a display.
It was plain enough to Frank that she was far from an ordinary girl. He had seen other girls like her in Maine, at Rockland, Camden, Belfast and Bar Harbor, but she seemed out of place in the wooded country up around Grand Lake.